Cooking
At least not in roasted cauliflower soup, garlic bread, brussels sprouts Caesar salad and Eric Kim’s braised chicken with 20 (!) cloves of garlic.
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My father used to say, “I’d rather have an ounce of garlic than a pound of truffles.” And he wasn’t kidding. My parents put garlic in just about everything: mashed into salad dressing; rubbed on toast; and simmered into soups, stews and pasta sauces. In those days before the Microplane, our battle-hardened garlic press never even found a home in a drawer, instead drafted straight from the dishwasher to the counter for its next tour of duty.
We often neglect the ones we love best. Garlic remains so ubiquitous in my own cooking that I nearly forgot to add it to my B.I.F. (Best Ingredients Forever) grand tour. But garlic, you pungent little marvel, this one’s for you.
Part of what makes garlic so indispensable is its range. The pale cloves can be fiercely biting when eaten raw, but soft, sweet and earthy when cooked long and slow.
Eric Kim’s garlic-braised chicken showcases garlic’s gentler side. The recipe calls for 20 (yes, 20) cloves of garlic, but since they’re left whole and simmered in white wine for an entire hour, they turn mellow, candylike and suffused with schmaltz (another one of my childhood B.I.F.s). You can get containers of peeled garlic cloves at many supermarkets, but I find it meditative to peel them myself, and it takes only a few minutes.
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Garlic-Braised Chicken
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